Charles Thiele

Charles Frederick Thiele (November 17, 1884 - February 3, 1954) was an American-Canadian bandmaster, musician and industrialist. He founded Waterloo Metal Stampings, the first company to manufacture music stands in Canada. Thiele also established the Waterloo Music Company, which produced sheet music used by bands across Canada. Actively involved in the local and national music community, Thiele was a founding member of the Ontario Amateur Bands Association and the Canadian Band Association, and was the driving force behind the nationally recognized Waterloo Band Festival.

Biography Thiele with wife Louise (left) and daughter Carolyn (right). Thiele was born on November 17, 1884, in New York City. He was the son of third-generation German-American Elizabeth Kernig, who supported the family as a chef, and Helmut Thiele, a newly landed German immigrant. Thiele married his wife, Louise Freeman, at the age of 19. Their daughter, Carolyn, was born the following year in 1904. Louise and Carolyn also performed as part of circuit Chautauquas throughout the United States in order to supplement Thiele's income while he headed the Rumford, Maine city band as Musical Director. They moved to the region, in part, because of anti-German sentiment in the United States following World War I.

While living in Waterloo Thiele founded two companies - Waterloo Metal Stampings and the Waterloo Music Company - employing as many as 150 employees at the height of their operation. Waterloo Metal Stampings began after Thiele took over a section of an industrial plant in Waterloo. When it was founded in 1922, Waterloo Music Company sold and produced music for pianists working in silent film houses, later selling sheet music used by bands across the country. The business was relocated to the Tannery building at Joseph and Victoria streets in Kitchener, Ontario, in 2011. The business was purchased by St. John's Music in 2004, who dropped the original name after the moving the business to Kitchener. The location closed after 92 years in operation in 2014.

In addition to his band association work, Thiele served as the editor of Musical Canada from 1928-1933.

In 1944 Thiele played a role in founding the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, along with conductor Glenn Kruspe and percussionist Archie Bernhardt. The camp was dedicated to the memory of Canadian bandsmen who had fought and lost their lives during World War I and II. It was held in Waterloo Park making use of a bandstand donated by Joseph E. Seagram of Seagram Distilleries. The event featured fifteen bands and 80 solo performers making it, at the time, the largest music festival in the country. The festival ran from 1932–40 and 1946–58, going on hiatus during the early 1940s as a result of World War II. By 1953 the festival featured 60 bands and attracted more than 1,000 solo entries. A funeral for Thiele was held on February 6, 1954, at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Kitchener with an address given by Reverend J.G. Mudock.

Following Thiele's death his personal library of band music was left to the Waterloo Musical Society. He was remembered in a similar light by composer and music conductor Howard Cable, who in 2016 referred to Thiele as a "hidden star" without whom Canadian music could not have attained its current status.

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